How is Exiled Kings different from Citadel?

One rule. Both games use the same skimming deal, the same suit-blind downward build and the same single-card moves. In Citadel an empty pile accepts any card. In Exiled Kings an empty pile accepts only a King. That removes the family's easiest trick, parking a blocker in a space, and makes every dig a matter of planning through the build alone.

What does skimming during the deal mean?

As each card is dealt, the game checks whether it fits a foundation right then: an Ace always does, and a card fits if the card one rank below it in the same suit is already the top of a foundation. A card that fits goes to the foundation instead of the table and its tableau position is skipped. Skimming stops the moment the deal ends.

Why are my piles different lengths?

Because skimmed cards never reach the table. The four Aces always skim, and often a few more cards do, so fewer than 48 cards are dealt into the eight piles and they end at uneven lengths. No pile ever holds more than six cards.

Can I move a run of cards together?

No. Only the top card of a pile moves, one card per move, even when several cards below it are already in descending order. This is the castle family rule and it is what keeps a fully visible deal difficult.

Is Exiled Kings winnable?

Often, but less often than Citadel. Beleaguered Castle, the family's parent, is winnable roughly two games in three, and the skimming deal makes Citadel easier than that; closing the spaces to Kings takes some of that ease back. Because nothing is hidden, a loss is nearly always a planning mistake rather than bad luck, and the game tells you when no legal move remains.

Is there a stock or a redeal?

No. All 52 cards are dealt at the start, either to the table or, by skimming, to the foundations. There is no stock to turn and no redeal.

Exiled Kings Solitaire - Play Online & 100% Free

Play Exiled Kings Solitaire — Citadel Where Only a King May Take a Space

Exiled Kings is Citadel with a single rule changed, and the change is the whole game. The deal is Citadel's: 52 cards go out one at a time across eight piles, and any card that fits a foundation at the moment it is dealt — an Ace, or the next card of a suit already started — goes straight up instead of onto the table. Once the deal ends, skimming stops and you are on your own. The tableau builds down by rank regardless of suit, one card at a time, and here is the twist: an empty pile accepts only a King. In Citadel a space is a free parking place for any card; in Exiled Kings it is a throne, and only a King may sit on it. No stock, no waste, no redeal. Free in your browser, no sign-up.

How Do You Play Exiled Kings?

Goal: build all four foundations from Ace to King by suit.

Setup

Deal: cards are dealt face up, row by row, across eight piles. Any card that fits a foundation as it is dealt is placed there instead and its position is skipped.
Foundations: the four Aces always end up founded by the deal, often with a few more cards on top of them.
Tableau: at most six cards in any pile, all face up. Fewer whenever the deal banked more than the Aces.
No stock, no waste, no reserves.

Rules

Build tableau piles down by rank regardless of suit: any 6 goes on any 7.
Move one card at a time. Sequences never travel together.
An empty pile accepts only a King. Every other card is refused.
Foundations build up by suit from the Ace. Cards on a foundation stay there.
Skimming happens only during the deal. After that, every foundation play is a move you make.
There is no redeal. When no legal move remains, the game is over.

Exiled Kings Strategy

Citadel players arrive with one habit that will lose this game: treating an empty pile as a free cell. Unlearn it first.

Read the deal before you move. The skim tells you a lot: every foundation shows how far its suit has already climbed, so the cards you need next are known from move one. Find them and count what covers them.
A space is worth a King, and nothing else. Clearing a pile costs several moves and buys exactly one thing: a home for one King. Choose the King that is covering the most useful cards, and do not empty a pile until you know which King will take it.
Keep the Kings you cannot move at the bottom of your plans. A King already at the base of a pile is harmless. A King in the middle of one is a wall, and the only way through it is to build the pile down and then exile the King to a space.
Use suit-blind building to choose your host. Because any 6 fits any 7, you usually have a choice of where a card lands. Prefer the host whose pile you will not need to dig into again, and keep your pile tops spread across ranks so the next uncovered card has somewhere to go.

Exiled Kings in the Beleaguered Castle Family

Exiled Kings belongs to the open castle family that descends from Beleaguered Castle, a line of games with no stock and nothing hidden, where the entire challenge is the order in which you dig. Citadel added the skimming deal, in which cards that fit a foundation are banked as they are dealt. Exiled Kings takes Citadel's deal and build and closes the spaces to everything but Kings, which is the same tightening that Streets and Alleys receives in Penelope's Web, and that Baker's Dozen receives in Portuguese Solitaire. The game is listed in the PySol Fan Club collection and in BVS Solitaire's castle group, which describes it as "similar to Citadel with this one exception".

Rule sources differ on one detail of the deal. Some describe the skimming deal running down the columns; the PySol tradition, which this version follows, deals row by row. The two produce different boards from the same shuffle but exactly the same game, and dealing row by row keeps Exiled Kings and Citadel identical seed for seed, so the only thing that changes when you switch between them is what a space will accept.

If you enjoy this shape, try Citadel itself for the same deal with open spaces, or Beleaguered Castle for the family's original layout with the Aces founded before the deal.